Cortesie per gli ospiti

I could not help but thinking of the old children's story of Hansel and Gretel. This time, Hansel and Gretel are grown up and get lost in Venice - the witch - being played chillingly by Christopher Walken as "Robert" - a rather strange man who lures the couple to dine with him and then later to stay at his house. You will notice that Robert always has one hand in his pocket. Very mysterious and wicked.

This film established for me conclusively that Paul Schrader was an aesthetician rather than a thoughtful artist, after other stylish trips into the lives of drug-dealers, gigolos, etc. Not in the same way that Michael Mann is, but, well...

For a period in the early nineties I noted that the movies which provided insufficient answers and portrayed unlikeable characters would first p*ss me off, and then draw me back in after a month or so to reinspect it for evidence I'd missed; Plenty, Comfort of Strangers, others.

While ambiguity can be stimulating, this seems to be just a tease. Either the characters in this world are operating according to some undisclosed rule, or some obscure theme links it all. I have what I believe is an accurate thesis about why this numb, vacationing English couple endures the awful Walken and Mirren more than once, but it's facile and barely worth pursuing as a discussion or as a movie.

Beyond the triumvirate (Schrader, MacEwan, Pinter) working overtime to be inscrutable, Rupert Everett fails to bring his A game to this, or engage with anyone; Richardson, the schoolgirls, his inexplicably peevish orders not to scratch. There's also some strange gay intertextuality in Everett's casting, as a straight man who unwittingly becomes the target of another (ostensibly) straight mans attention. Not since Quentin Crisp played Queen Elizabeth will you have been this confused. No, it wasn't well-known at the time that Everett was gay, but Schrader would have known. Perhaps it's a short list of young straight British actors who look terrific unclothed as the script requires here. The deliberately unengaged quality of the couple is not served well by Everett's lack of engagement due to being gay playing straight. This layering conflates the themes and causes really mixed results; readings are muddied almost immediately.

But I'm very aware and appreciative of the beautifully designed camera work; the linking shots, establishing shots, and of course long developed sequences are among the most beautiful pieces of celluloid I've ever seen. Ditto for Badalamenti's ravishing, ominous score.

There are some beautiful, filmic moments in it. Robert loses the cameras attention in the middle of his tiresome story and we go for a trip around a swank bar. At first there are only men (oh, it's gay bar...) then a man applies chap stick, then a mannish woman flirts with a guy (hmmmm... it's not a gay bar), then an isolated red, curly-haired woman is dwelled on. I have no idea what it means and what Schrader was out to achieve but the sequence stays with me in a way the more narrative pieces of the film just sit there. Perhaps in another better movie it would add up to more. Here these moments just seem to fight the narrative.

After twelve years of scouring this movie for meaning, I give up. It's just not satisfying as a story, a parable, etc.. This is a frustrating, zero-steps-forward-two-steps-back endeavor. Together novelist McEwan, screenwriter Pinter and director Schrader crafted an emotional fog of a movie that deliberately posits problematics, but hints at few answers. Colin and Mary's six or seven scenes of idle chatter are badly directed and positively grating, something to be endured rather than enjoyed; consuming the dramatic arc alive. You could mix the scenes up and play them in any order you like and you still couldn't develop a viewers interest.

For deliberate ambiguity played well, just rent Last Year at Marienbad.

This is one of those movies like "Mommie Dearest" that, after the first viewing, you're not sure that you could have possibly seen what you think you saw. It's so over the top that you need to shower afterward. And then, for some twisted reason, you watch it again and you start to like it. Everything about it is preposterous (though, Venice looks cool). Natasha Richardson and Rupert Everett play, perhaps, the dullest couple to ever grace the screen. It is impossible to care about, or even understand, the emotional quandary they're going through. Helen Mirren is completely insane, but nothing can prepare you for the vintage, bravura Walken performance. His monologue about his father (that he delivers more than once in a dubious Italian accent) is a zenith in the Hammy Hall of Fame. Seek out someone else that has seen it and recite that monologue to each other in a bad Italian dialect and you will seldom in your life laugh harder. Rent (or buy, as I have) quickly and brace yourself.

The best way to approach Paul Schrader's stylish but unsettling new film is without any knowledge of the (admittedly slim) plot, involving two innocents abroad and their fateful encounter in decadent Venice with a local couple whose Old World manners hide a malignant obsession. This isn't the romantic Venice of many a travel guide, but a dark and ominous maze of Byzantine alleys and dead end streets, and Schrader gives the city a wonderfully rich and gritty sense of after-hours entropy. Harold Pinter's screenplay is likewise (and typically) indirect, but the combination of an incredibly dense and evocative mood with the author's teasing lack of narrative helps to create a feeling of almost unspeakable dread. The film is certainly an acquired taste: perverse and pretentious in the old-fashioned European art house tradition (and, at times, oddly and inappropriately comic), but the effect can be disturbing to viewers caught in the right frame of mind.

A British couple contemplating marriage (Natasha Richardson and her young, handsome paramour, played by Rupert Everett) take a vacation in Venice, to sort things out, as the Brits say. There they meet a local bar owner named Robert, played by Christopher Walken, a lyrical, dramatic fellow always going on about incidents in his childhood, his father, his grandfather, his virility and the like. His personality contrasts sharply with that of the Everett character, who is withdrawn and tentative. The Brits are strangely drawn to Robert and to his odd, sexually frank wife, played by Helen Mirren in the sort of role she apparently was born to play. But they are also at times revolted. They are vaguely aware that the Venetian couple have an unnaturally intense interest in them; the contact also seems to stimulate them, both sexually and emotionally.

No need here to go into the truly shocking denouement, beyond to say that it is what you would expect from anything in which Pinter has a hand. As always, his dialog achieves unique power through its precision and understatement. Best line -- Mirren's "I'll tell you where you are -- on the other side of the mirror." Positively chilling, positively precise.

Fine, fine acting, especially the tragic, sinister Walken, who is I think incapable of giving a bad performance -- this is probably the best I have ever seen him. Gorgeously and lushly filmed, with every scene bathed in deep colors and haunting, orchestral music. A deeply affecting film, well worth seeing.